Men more likely to catch mobile malware: how to stay safe

Congratulations women, you’re 4% less likely to be infected by malicious mobile software than men. You still can’t relax too much, however, as 32% of females are still vulnerable to mobile malware.

A new study* has shown that while women are slightly more secure than their male counterparts, there are still a worryingly high number of vulnerable smartphones in the wild. 34% of users don’t have anti-theft or anti-virus software installed on their mobile phones – a worrying statistics, considering phones are just like small computers nowadays.

What’s worse, however, is that nearly half of all smartphones users don’t back up their data. This means that if a phone is stolen, or is wiped by a virus, there’s no way for users to get their lost photos, videos or messages back.

As we discussed a few weeks ago, most mobile malware (especially for Android smartphones and tablets) comes from apps installed from outside of the Google Play App store. In fact, about 99% of all malware infections come from installing apps not approved by Google.

Therefore if you’re in the 1/3 of people who don’t have dedicated mobile security software, you can still stay relatively safe by only downloading applications from the Play store that comes pre-installed on your device. If you were invited to install apps from websites or other locations, you would be safer to avoid it.

If you want a bit more security, however, or if you like to live dangerously by downloading apps from other locations, or if you want to protect your smartphone from loss or theft, you’ll need an app like Norman Mobile Security.

Anti-theft and anti-virus

The easiest and best way to keep your Android smartphone safe from theft and viruses is to install a dedicated app that’s up to the task. Look for a reputable name when you’re choosing a mobile anti-virus, or you could end up downloading a useless app at best, or a malicious one at worst.

You can read about all the features of Norman’s anti-theft and anti-virus software over at the Play store listing, but in short, it offers:

While there are many mobile phone anti-virus apps, we obviously recommend Norman Mobile Security. But you don’t take our word for it – the Norman anti-virus app has nearly 5,000 installs on Android smartphones, and has an average rating of between four and five stars.